Sinister is a very well known horror movie that came out in 2012. It is known as one of the scariest horror to many people though in ways different from other horror films. With Halloween just around the corner, this story seems suitable. Spoilers are ahead that show the key twists of the movie and could ruin the mystery. 

Sinister opens up with a horrifying tape recording of a family being hanged at night during a storm. After that cruel title card it introduces us to true crime writer, Elison Oswalt, who is known for solving cold cases while writing his books is desperate for achieving the high that was his successful book, Kentucky Blood, is moving into a new house that was the location of a mysterious murder of a family’s 2 parents and 2 kids with the disappearance of the youngest kid. His wife, older son, and youngest daughter move in with him and are suffering because the community knows that he may make the local police look bad and remind the community of a horrific event that they are trying to forget. 

Elison looks into the crimes as soon as he arrives and goes up into the attic to find a mysterious box of several tapes and a tape recorder which is strange because images after the crime show the attic as empty and there was no other person to go into the house after the investigation was closed down. When he watches a tape he learns that it was the murder that happened at the house that he is in. This was the same tape as the entrance. He calls up the police department for information but they do not answer. Elison watches 3 more tapes the following day that show similar murders with ominous music that show a family tied into a car and a lighter as well as a knife murder. The other film was one of people tied to chairs and pulled into a pool. This one was important because it had Elison notice a mysterious figure in the pool. As Elison looks away to refill his drink the figure on the still image looks toward him. 

Elison does face some pressure from his wife to move to her parents house away from him because she found out that they had moved into the house of the murder. He goes into his basement to watch the final tape which shows a lawn mower that starts to head to people on the ground. This terrifies him and causes him to turn off the film. He gets a call from a professor that talks about an ancient pagan deity who was known as Bughuul. He was known as a child snatcher that took their souls to the underworld. He also communicates with a deputy of the town that we call deputy so-and-so. He connected crimes similar to all of the tapes at the time that they are listed. The interesting thing is that the people that died moved into the house of the previous crime at some point in time. 

Elison hears a sound in the attic but luckily only sees a snake. He does find a new box of pictures that look like they were drawn by children. Each image matches the camera angles but also shows more. There is always a symbol drawn on some surface which Elison matches to the films. More importantly he finds that there is a figure named Mr. Boogie that is in each picture whom he finds in each film where the picture was. Elison hears the noise of the tape recorder in the attic so he goes up finding the kids that went missing all watching it then with the jumpscare of Bughuul. Elison runs outside burning the tapes and packing the car with his family. 

His family moves into a new house where things seem normal again. He gets a call from the deputy who tells him that the common theme between the murders is that they all moved out of the house where a killing had taken place and that is when the bad happens. He starts to feel nauseous when he looks into his drink and sees a glowing liquid. He passes out and the last thing he sees is his daughter with an axe before she kills him and the rest of the family while recording them. We see her drawing a picture when the film closes with the kids running into a hallway of the house with Bughuul. 

The true question is why is this movie scarier than many others. One reason is the inescapability of it. Unlike other horror movies when you are wondering why the people don’t just leave or fight back or anything like that. In this film they do what you would naturally do like moving out of the house and destroying the tapes. Every time one of these things happen it causes their doom or the tapes just magically return. 

Another reason for why this movie is so terrifying is because of the tapes. The tapes and the music that is played simultaneously cause massive fear. The lower quality from an older tape recorder adds to it because you cannot see well and have little idea of what is out there on your screen. Not to mention the lawn mower has one of the greatest and most terrifying jump-scares of all time with the camera fixed to the lawn mower and all of a sudden seeing a person enter the frame. The tapes are also given innocent names so that they do not look too bad. 

The music is very important for the fear factor. They are so ominous and seem more like sounds than actual music. It is so good and hard to explain that the only way to truly understand how it is you would have to listen to it yourself. It is interesting that instead of writing the music, they found and bought rights to them from small artists online. 

This is all interesting, but what adds to this story is the fact that there was a sequel released 3 years later. Sinister II was released in 2015 to less good reviews and opinions but it did add onto the story of the original film. 

The sequel opens up with the deputy from the last movie, we do not receive a new name for him across the whole movie, researching the houses with similar problems that Elison faced, now knowing that you cannot move into the houses. He burns down the houses to end the chains. It is now known that there are several chains of the Bughuul curse. He buys a house that had these killings but when he arrives to burn it down, he learns that a woman is hiding from her abusive husband there with her twin sons. 

The deputy realizes that he must do something so that the family survives and is okay in the end. In this movie we get to see one of the twin’s perspectives, Dylan’s, as he is being forced to watch the videos of murders with the ghosts that are a part of his house chain. They promise that his nightmares will stop if he watches them all and that if he doesn’t Bughuul will get mad. Deputy faces a lot of technological hauntings with his computer showing Bughuul and the radio repeating what he says, as well as seeing Bughuul haunting him from the corners of his view for a split second. 

Conflict arises when Dylan refuses to watch the final video with Zach turning out to be the true and successful investment. The abusive father takes them back to his house. Deputy tries to warn them but the dad beats him off and threatens him away from their house. The deputy gets a fearful message from the mother and goes to help them. We see the recording starting from Zach and the dad is burned alive on a cross. The deputy drives his truck into the cornfield and hits Zach with his car. He unties Dylan and the mother and they run back to the house with Zach chasing them with a scythe. With the ghosts trying to help him, Zach still fails to kill everyone and the house, with him inside, magically burns down because of Bughuul’s streak ending. The movie ends with us learning that Bughuul now has a hatred for deputy. 

This movie was also pretty scary with its recordings that are almost more brutal than in the first movie. The first tape showed a family being tied above a swamp and eaten by crocodiles; the next was a family freezing in snow; another was a flooded kitchen having a wire tossed into the water to electrocute a tied up family; and the last, and worst, a family pinned down with weights in a star shape in the middle of a church as rats burrowed through them and they tried to escape fire. 

Why was this movie so disliked? One main reason is because it didn’t have any of the mystery that the first had. We go in knowing how Bughuul works and can predict how most of the movie will go. They tried to replace the mystery with the twists but they just aren’t enough to change it up and make the movie feel right.